


Dust and Devils

by roane



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biggs lives, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Inspired by Music, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, The Author Regrets Everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:11:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8818084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roane/pseuds/roane
Summary: Even now, Biggs could hear everyone around him was singing the praises of the Tatooine farm boy who’d come out of nowhere to make the one-in-a-million shot that had destroyed the Death Star. And then in the next breath, they were mourning his loss.In the space of a few seconds, Luke Skywalker had saved the Alliance, and then died for it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is mostly my fault, but it's also the fault of [thetaoofzoe](http://thetaoofzoe.tumblr.com)\--I forget which one of us said "hey what if Biggs lived but Luke didn't?" but both of us ran with it. It's also the fault of [thinkbiggs](http://thinkbiggs.tumblr.com) who introduced me to ["Chasing Twisters" by Delta Rae](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgRN1UMtdu0), which was on repeat the whole time I wrote this. I recommend listening to it while reading for maximum heartbreak.

A couple of shooting stars, they used to say. 

_“Listen, I’ll hear all your stories when we get back. All right?”_

_“I told you I'd make it someday, Biggs.”_

_“It’ll be like old times, Luke, they’ll never stop us.”_

As he stood in the hangar on Yavin, looking at an empty X-wing bay, if he had the chance to go back, he’d only say one thing. 

_Don’t go, Luke. Get a little more training under your belt. Red Squadron can use you next time. Stay here._

But no. Biggs had been so cocky, so blinded with delight at Luke’s sudden appearance, that flying a mission with him seemed the best sort of reunion imaginable. And it had been. For a little while. Hell, for most of it. 

Even now, Biggs could hear everyone around him was singing the praises of the Tatooine farm boy who’d come out of nowhere to make the one-in-a-million shot that had destroyed the Death Star. And then in the next breath, they were mourning his loss.

In the space of a few seconds, Luke Skywalker had saved the Alliance, and then died for it.

Biggs supposed that should fill him a new fervor for the cause, but all he felt was empty.

He might have stood there all night, looking at the spot where Red Five should have landed, but for Wedge coming to find him and pulling him away. 

It was Wedge who dragged the whole story out of him later that night, opening by passing him a flask of something that smelled like engine degreaser and saying casually, “You knew him before, didn’t you?”

It spilled out of Biggs in painful, burning chunks like debris from a blasted asteroid, from the moment his parents had taken him to visit the neighbors and their new baby boy, right up until that last moment next to his ship, when Biggs had a split second to decide if he was kiss Luke goodbye or if he was going to be a coward. 

He’d been a coward, thinking that there’d be time later, plenty of time, to see where they still stood with one another. Now he’d never know.

At some point, Wedge had taken him by the arm and led him to the rest of the victory party and at first, Biggs had wanted to scream at them, to grab one of the laughing survivors and demand to know how the _hell_ they thought there was reason to be happy, didn’t they know how much they’d all lost?

Wedge kept him in hand though, and it wasn’t long before Biggs was hearing the stories he should have heard from Luke. Not just the miracle shot. Saving a princess. Escaping the Imperials—more than once. Delivering the very plans they’d used to destroy the Death Star. Luke was a hero long before he’d set foot on Yavin. Everyone sounded so surprised. Biggs could have told them. He wasn’t surprised in the least. 

“Come on,” Wedge said. “There’s someone you need to meet.”

Strictly speaking, Biggs didn’t need an introduction to Leia Organa. He knew who she was. Still, he summoned up the minimum courtesy he could when she offered her hand. 

“You knew Luke,” she said, when Wedge had stepped out of earshot. “You were his friend.”

He wanted to think he’d been a hell of a lot more than that, but he’d spilled his guts enough for one night and he wasn’t drunk enough yet to do it again. He nodded. “We grew up together, Your Highness.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her voice was low and sweet and cultured, and Biggs hated her. It was her fault that Luke had ever wound up here in the first place. 

“Yeah. Me too.”

If she was taken aback at his brusque reply, she didn’t show it. “I don’t know if you’ve heard yet. We’re going to have a ceremony tomorrow to commemorate the ones we lost. And Luke… he deserves something more. Will you help me?”

“How?” 

The princess went on about some sort of posthumous award the Alliance wanted to give Luke and how it would be wonderful if someone who’d known him could stand in his place...

Biggs half-listened. All he wanted right at this moment was to get as far away from the Rebel Alliance as he could.

But instead he nodded, feeling like he owed Luke this one last duty to the cause he’d died for. 

#

The next morning, Biggs knew he’d made a terrible mistake. Not because the sour taste in his mouth and the raging headache. The idea of standing up in front of anybody, much less the whole damned Alliance, in Luke’s place, left him feeling queasier than any hangover ever could. It was too late to back out now.

He threw himself through the refresher and dressed himself in his uniform for what he thought might just be the last time. When he tried to enter the temple’s main hall, one of the guards stopped him, and that was when Leia’s full plan hit him. 

He wasn’t just going to accept this award on Luke’s behalf, he was going to literally stand in for him. He leaned heavily against the wall, letting the cool, ancient stone support his weight while he closed his eyes. 

The crowd inside the temple settled and quieted, and a voice interrupted his thoughts. “Hey. Darklighter, wasn’t it?”

Biggs gritted his teeth, knowing that voice. He opened his eyes. “Solo.”

Han Solo grinned easily. “They roped you into this too, huh?”

“They’re giving you a medal?” Biggs tried to keep his voice flat and even. _They’re giving you a medal for what exactly? Showing up ten seconds too late after fleeing like a kriffing coward?_

“I tried to talk ‘em out of it, but the princess—well you know how she can be.”

“Sure. I know.” 

“Listen.” Solo stepped closer and it took all of Biggs’s willpower not to shove him away. “I’m sorry. I know you and the kid were close.”

“Luke.”

“Sorry?”

“His name was Luke. Don’t call him ‘kid’.” That was his nickname to use, not this stranger’s.

“Right.” Han eyed him warily. “Sorry,” he repeated. “Luke was a good man.”

Biggs’s mouth tightened and he gave the barest nod, fighting the bitter taste in his mouth at hearing this man, in particular, praise Luke. Before he could come up with anything to say, the guards motioned for them to step forward.

The temple was enormous, and walk to the front was the longest walk that Biggs had ever taken. He was dimly aware of Han Solo beside him, with his first mate behind them. Faces were a blur to either side, although he knew every one of them. Biggs kept his head high. This wasn’t about him. This respect, this deference, it wasn’t for him, and knowing that was the only thing that kept him putting one foot in front of the other. This was for Luke, and for Luke, he would’ve walked up this aisle even if it had been on fire and surrounded by stormtroopers.

That might’ve been easier.

The princess stood on the dais surrounded by various Alliance officers. She was a vision in a white gown and smiled as if she were untouched by all the death and misery of the past few days.

It was a wordless ceremony. The princess put a medal around Solo’s neck first. When she turned to Biggs, he couldn’t bring himself to let her do the same to him. It wasn’t his medal. Or so he thought, until Leia cut her eyes off to the side, indicating that he should look. There was a third medal waiting in the hands of an aide. 

In case he missed the point, she made a small gesture with the medal in her hands and mouthed the word, “Yours.”

All he’d managed to do was keep from getting his ass blown out of the sky, and they were trying to give him a medal for it. If she’d told him that before, he never would have agreed to this. Which was probably why she hadn’t told him. 

Biggs was tempted to make a scene, to refuse it, but in the end, the politeness ingrained in him by his mother won out and he bent his head before the princess. The medal fell against his chest with a thud and he stared blankly at it while Leia went to retrieve the third and final one, Luke’s. 

Only then did she speak.

“Our victory came at the cost of a great many lives. Thanks to one man, in particular, we all stand here today. The Alliance wishes to recognize Luke Skywalker of Tatooine for his courage in the face of impossible odds, and posthumously grant him the rank of Commander. Although he was only with the Alliance a short time, Commander Skywalker’s contributions will never be forgotten.”

She offered Biggs the third medal, sadness written on every line of her face. He took it with numb fingers and burning eyes. As he and Solo turned to face the audience, he knew what he had to do next. There was only one place he wanted to go: home. Owen and Beru Lars deserved to know what had happened to their nephew, they deserved to know what he’d accomplished before he died.

If he had to swipe a freighter to do it, Biggs was going to go back to Tatooine.

#

_This is why he finally left. Oh, Luke._

Biggs stood in front of the burnt-out, ruined remains of the Lars homestead. He’d come straight there, before going home. It wasn’t hard to see the hand of the Empire in the blaster marks everywhere. Saddest of all, the two new graves beside that of Luke’s grandmother. The only markers were two pieces of plasteel etched in Luke’s careful handwriting: _Owen Lars_ and _Beru Whitesun Lars_.

He knelt there, not knowing what else to do, as burnt out and empty as the dwelling off to his left. Enough money had gotten him a beat-up on speeder in Mos Eisley. He could go anywhere he wanted. He could go home. See his folks. The two medals he’d been given on Yavin weighed heavy in his pocket, though. There was something he needed to do first.

He turned the speeder along a familiar route. Used to be, the feeling of the wind blowing past him like this could fix any problem, could push out any troubles he was having, if only for a while. Not this time. The laughing, bright-eyed ghost in the passenger seat refused to budge. It mocked him for driving too slow.

Coming back here had been a huge mistake. Every breath of dusty air, the feel of the twin suns on his skin, the sound of the wind rushing past, all of it was Luke. Home was Luke. 

Biggs pushed on anyway, taxing the old speeder’s engine until Beggar’s Canyon came into view. He’d taken the high approach, so he could get out and walk to the edge, looking down on the twisty stone walls, the half-hidden outcroppings, the dirt floor far far below. Part of him wished he’d gone home, pulled his old skyhopper out of storage, flown the canyon one last time. Without Luke’s voice on the comms cheering him on, though, it wouldn’t have been the same. 

Plus, he thought, eyeing the scoring along the walls where numerous pilots had had close calls, this was no time for him to be in a situation where one moment’s impulse could turn him into fireball on the canyon floor. That wasn’t what he came here to do. He pulled the medals out of his pocket and checked the inscriptions on them. The one labeled “Commander Luke Skywalker” he put back in his pocket.

The other one, the one with his name on it, sat in his hand like a stone.

He took a deep breath, drew his arm back, and threw the medal with all of his strength into the canyon, screaming so loud it tore at his throat. It was a wordless scream, and when he ran out of breath for the first one, his breath hitched and he screamed again, the force of it sending him to his knees in the dirt. 

The screams slammed open a door inside of him, one that he’d been keeping closed with every bit of strength he had. For the first time since Luke’s last cry had cut off on the comms, Biggs gave in to the luxury of full-throated grief. Kneeling there on the edge of the canyon where he and Luke had spent endless hours chasing each other, both in the air and on the ground, Biggs let the tears fall down his face in trails of fire until he felt scraped out and hollow. 

The sun was starting to go down when he finally managed to get back to his feet. One thought gave him the strength to get to his feet. One thought made up his mind, told him what he needed to do next.

When Han Solo appeared out of nowhere over Yavin, guns blazing, he’d only managed to get one of the TIE fighters on their tail. One of them was blown free. One of the TIE pilots had survived.

That pilot was the one who’d killed Luke. 

Standing there, taking one last look at Beggar’s Canyon, Biggs made a quiet vow to track that pilot down. Whatever it took, he’d find out who’d been in that ship. Life expectancy for TIE pilots was measured in months, but if they were still alive, Biggs would find them. 

Maybe Luke wouldn’t approve of vengeance in his name, but Luke wasn’t here to stop him—and that was the point.

Biggs lifted his head and went back to his speeder. The best place to start was back with the Alliance. It would take him time to get to the rendezvous, so he’d better start now.

He pointed the speeder toward Mos Eisley, letting the sunset’s shadows settle over him. If he pushed, he’d be back in town before dark, and off Tatooine by morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the lyric:   
> _And I went home,_  
>  _Chasing twisters in the canyon_  
>  _My cathedral is the badlands_  
>  _Dust and devils on my conscience_  
>  _Come back to me darlin'_


End file.
